Kites, drones, public toilets, social housing, and whakapapa are among the topics to be explored by four artists while living at Te Matatiki Toi Ora The Arts Centre.
The Arts Centre welcomes four new creatives in residence for ten weeks, 19 August – 27 October.
They are: David Bramwell Cook, Emily Hartley-Skudder, Te Rautini Sheridan, and Harete Tito.
The four will stay in the Creative Residences, a four-bedroom apartment above Lumière Cinemas on the west side of The Arts Centre.
The Arts Centre creative residency programme is a rare opportunity for artists to develop their own work free of distractions and builds collaboration across creative disciplines. For the public, every residency includes opportunities to engage with the artists.
Visual Artist Emily Hartley-Skudder says she is looking forward to returning to the city where she studied fine arts. Of The Arts Centre she says, “this wonderful place is one of my very first memories of the city.” Hartley-Skudder’s art practice often involves installations. These play with distinctions between public and private space, and the meaning attached to objects used for cleaning and personal grooming. Look out for intriguing responses to the public bathrooms dotted around The Arts Centre.
Photographer David Bramwell Cook, by contrast, plans to go outside The Arts Centre and work with communities in social housing in the city. Cook recently finished a collaboration called Ko te Reo ō Ngā Tāngata/The People’s Voice, in which he worked with thirty Wellington City Housing tenants to co-create a street exhibition and newspaper. Cook is also a co-founder of Photobook NZ, which hosts a biennial photobook festival with Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand.
Artist Harete Tito’s specialities include making paper from native rākau, notably harakeke, a skill that she hopes to share with other artists during her residency. Amongst other things, Tito creates limited edition art books. Tito’s residency project will explore whakapapa, beginning with the birth of her kuia Araiteuru, born in Ōtautahi in 1906 during the New Zealand exhibition, and whose father was one of the carvers for the exhibition.
Artist Te Rautini Sheridan, meanwhile, hopes to create ‘manu matatopa’ or fusions of the traditional manu tukutuku (kites) and contemporary drones. Sheridan plans to use natural resources such as kākaho, raupō, muka, and harakeke paper, while also deploying modern technologies, and looks forward to sharing the results with the public.
The Creative Residency programme for artists is funded by Creative New Zealand.